UNIONIST FREE-TRADERS AND T.R.N., NEXT GENERAL ELECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.1
Sin,—The problem of how to vote or whether to vote at all at the next General Election is one which is no doubt per- plexing all Unionist Free-traders just now. The Liberal Party is seeking to demoralise the electors by promising all sorts of social reforms, and that the rich man will pay for them. The Tariff Reformers promise the same things, and that the foreigner will pay for them. Both are deluding the working man by promising him something for nothing. To
vote for either party in such circumstances seems to me to be wrong, and therefore I must abstain from voting. There is one Cabinet Minister who tells the people the truth. I mean Mr. John Burns, for in the last Report of the Local Government Board he says: "Unhappily people cannot be persuaded that all taxation in the end reaches those who are least able to bear it." This is a sound and eternal economic truth. Is it any wonder that Mr. John Burns is conspicuously absent from Budget platforms ? Two other Members of Parliament bravely stand up and say what they know to be true instead of what they think will please—Mr. Harold Cox and Lord Robert Cecil—and both are threatened with political extinction. The passage I have quoted from Mr. John Burns might be used by the Conservative Party with the most telling effect in the constituencies were it not that it must rebound against every Tariff Reformer. There is one con- tingency which may arise which would cause me to vote at a General Election. If the House of Lords deletes the land clauses from the Budget, and Mr. Asquith goes to the country with the cry of "Down with the House of Lords!" then I shall vote against him, because I should feel that I was not voting for either party in the House of Commons, but for the House of Lords and the Constitution.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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